Chapter 24: Kept

The man from the museum collection wore a gray coat and carried no briefcase.

On the closing Saturday he stood in front of Green Hour for a long time.

Then he asked the gallery owner for my price.

I gave him a number for the other eight paintings.

It made the gallery owner sit down.

"And Green Hour?" he asked.

"It stays."

"I could go higher."

"I know," I said. "It still stays."

He nodded.

"Then the eight," he said. "Under your name, on a wall in a public building."

"Under my name."

He shook my hand, and I felt nothing but plain gladness.

That evening the gallery was full again.

The reporters had mostly gone, and the people who came now were the ones who had asked to be told.

The frame shop owner came in a green velvet hat.

The critic from the city paper came.

So did a woman who had bought one of my small drawings on the first night.

Helen came early, in her navy dress, and stood in front of her old garden for a long while.

Simon came in a charcoal coat with a small bundle held carefully against his chest.

My niece slept through the whole room.

"She's got the crease," he whispered, and I saw that he was smiling.

"I know."

"She'll be impossible."

"I know that too."

Gavin stood at my elbow, in the suit with no tie, and did not leave my side.

At seven, the front door opened.

Miriam came in alone, in her silver coat, without her pearls.

I had never seen her neck bare before.

She did not look for me.

She walked straight across the floor to the far wall and stopped in front of the kitchen.

The gallery owner had turned the lights up, as I had asked.

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